


Conviction

by disarmlow



Series: From Dust [4]
Category: American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:10:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7493295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disarmlow/pseuds/disarmlow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't want to look at him when she whispers "Go away," but she forces herself to, forces herself to see the stark hurt in his dark eyes, the hesitation in his touch, his fingers barely brushing her skin, hovering over her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Will You Know Where You've Been?

There are moments in which Violet can't stand to look at him. She can't stand the inkiness of his black eyes, the gold in his hair, the way he still seems to lose weight even after death, how his cheeks get more and more hollow. These moments, her heart swells with so much hatred, for him and for herself, that she can barely breathe, and when he touches her her skin crawls underneath his hand, leaving goosebumps on her pale skin.

She doesn't want to look at him when she whispers "Go away," but she forces herself to, forces herself to see the stark hurt in his dark eyes, the hesitation in his touch, his fingers barely brushing her skin, hovering over her. He isn't sure if she is serious. He thinks she is testing him.

She had told him to never go away again, even if she asked, and boy, did she regret it. Tate took everything she said literally, never forgot a single word that passed her lips. She couldn't wish him away, so she'd sigh and disappear.

Only for a few moments, never longer than a couple of hours, because she'd begin to feel him stalking the house, lurking in the basement. She could feel the cold rush of him all over her body, feel the darkness in him rising, erasing everything good and loveable in him. If she took longer than an hour, she'd find Tate stalking Travis, watching every move he made, and it made Violet hate him all the more.

As if she'd leave him for Travis, as if another man could be even a fraction of the reason she began to hate him, began to pull away. It was just another way for Tate to forget all the awful things he'd done to her, to her family, to pretend it was Travis and not his own choices, his own evil, that made her need space.

Sometimes when she'd go away, she'd find him sitting at the gazebo, near the spot where she'd woken up with his finger bruises on her neck. She'd find him sitting with his head in his hands, the sunlight making his golden curls a halo on his head, and she'd begin to love him again.

If she went away too long he would stay awake for days, watching her sleep, and his very presence irritated her, the way he hovered over her as if she were a child.

She wondered how she could live this way, how she could spend the rest of eternity loving him and hating him, wanting him close and wanting him gone. She wanted to forgive him, to feel the same way she had when he had woken up, bloody and confused in her arms like a newborn. For years, it had been like that, them spending days in bed making love and talking about nothing, but slowly, the hatred had crept back into her heart, and she thought maybe it was because nothing inside of Tate had really changed.

She felt the darkness in him, the coldness, when he watched Travis play with those little girls, felt all the awful things he wanted to do to him for so much as touching her all those years ago.

She wondered if there was any light in him at all, or if had all been her projection of what she thought he should be, of the boy she thought she had known. She loved that boy still, but every glimpse she had of that darkness made her question him, made her question herself.

What did it mean that she couldn't make herself leave for good, that she saw the darkness rising and rising in him every day and she still couldn't bear the thought of not having him.

Maybe she was just as dark as he was. Maybe her light was fading in this hellish place. Every moment his black eyes were on her she felt colder and colder.

Just when she thought she might cut her own throat just to feel the warmth of her dead blood flowing, a new family moved into the house, and everything changed.


	2. At the Edge of a Cliff

Twins. A boy and a girl, not quite eighteen. Both of them dark and beautiful, the same blue eyes peeking out from under the same fall of shining black hair. The girl often pokes out her bottom lip and raises her chin, defiant in a way that reminds Tate of Violet when she was angry or rebellious.

The boy seems different, stands straight while his sister slumps, chin raised not in defiance but confidence, arrogance, maybe. When he speaks his voice is deeper than his almost feminine features bely. Pretty big, muscular across the chest, lean at the waist. Tate senses the male twin is maybe a jock, plays something faggy like soccer or lacrosse.

Tate watches them listening to their parents rave about the house, about it's size and low low price, all the things he'd heard from prospective buyers over the years. The twins exchange glances, smile, and Tate leans forward, watching them closer.

He had always been fascinated by twins, by the bond, the semi-telepathy they seemed to share. He suddenly remembered, in the vague way that he had of remembering after death, that during his rampage he had cornered those hot blonde, vapid freshmen twins. He remembered shooting one in the foot just to see if the other would scream instead. It had been rather disappointing, since the other twin had promptly fainted instead.

The guilt that he felt over this was a small, hot ache at the back of his head, something he could banish with a shake of his blonde curls, a slight crack of his neck. The time in this house, the years stretching out before him like miles and miles of blacktop highway, it made it all easier.

The girl takes Violet's room, of course, instantly attracted to the area as if she could sense that she and the dead girl who had previously inhabited it share a common bond.

Violet is more interested than jealous of the girl's surly vitality. Maybe because unlike Tate, Violet had done her own kind of living during her time at the Murder House. She had gone out every Halloween, and it only takes four years before Tate begins to notice her hips filling out, how her cheekbones began to stand out further as she loses baby fat. He had gone out with her for three of them, and he hadn't noticed much of a difference...maybe a little more broadness across the chest. But maybe that was wishful thinking, he thought, looking at the twin boy's muscular back as he stooped to pick up his end of the couch.

In any case, it seemed that leaving the Murder House each Halloween was aging her. Tate mentioned this to her and she got paranoid, started looking for gray hairs and wrinkles. She spoke to Moira, who laughed and said her aged appearance wasn't from living outside the Murder House but simply from existing, from her soul aging, maturing. "If all else fails, dear," Moira comforted, "you can choose to appear young." She turned away and her middle aged saddlebags lifted up into a firm twentysomething ass again.

Tate had laughed and laughed at that story, partly because Violet had literally used the term "firm twentysomething ass" and partly because he understood now why he still looked barely eighteen instead of twenty two. He could never mature because in order to mature, in order to live, you had to want to. Tate couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted to live.

Violet drifts around the house with a smile as the family moves in, excited to have change in the never ending Murder House. Tate feels a smidgen of jealousy over this, over the way she doesn't care that they couldn't make love in every room, couldn't laugh while they played Scrabble in the living room. Not that they did much of either of those anymore. They still make love, still laugh and talk, but Tate left conversations with Violet feeling slightly wounded. He could never remember what she'd said or done to make him feel that way, but when she twisted away from him in the night it made his heart ache.

"Should we introduce ourselves?" She asks, twirling around in the new dress she'd bought in October. It was still Violet, still a hippie floral pattern but shorter _(flirtier,_ his mind insists), and with a black beret cocked jauntily on her blond head.

Tate, (still in his old striped sweater and courderoys), snorts. "Why? They won't last."

"Stop brooding. It's wearing thin." Her words sting until she slides her eyes toward his and gives him a half smile

He can't help returning it, and when he does, his spirits lift. "Sure. Should we do it at once so that maybe they'll assume we're twins too?"

"Incestuous ghost twins? No thanks."

"Mr. and Mrs. Tate Langdon then?" He asks, joking but not really joking.

Violet laughs, swats at his arm. He grabs her forearm, twists her to him for a kiss, and for an instant, everything seems right again.

She pulls away first, just like always, and he wonders if this is what being in love is supposed to be like, supposed to be breaking and healing over and over and over until you die. Or in his case, slowly go insane from the literal eternity they faced.

She walked down the hallway, toying with the hem of her new dress, and he wasn't sure if he should follow her. He watched her, watched every move she made, every wrinkle she made by toying with the hem of her new dress, wondering if it was nerves, wondering if the new handsome live boy gave her those nerves.

Then she turned her head, looked at him over her shoulder with beckoning eyes, and the buzzing in his head quieted. He's healed, for a moment, and he follows her down the hall, forever her slave.


	3. Rattle the Walls

The introduction doesn't go as planned. Tate and Violet get into an argument before they make it to the hallway.

It starts with something simple. Tate has taken her hand on the stroll toward the new, live twins in the house, and as the handsome male twin pokes his head out of his room to yell to his sister, Violet drops Tate's hand.

Tate stops in his tracks, and when Violet turns to look at him she's blushing. Tate feels anger instead of hangdog acceptance, and because that's rare when he's with Violet, it surprises her into her own anger, and suddenly they're shouting at each other in the hallway of the Murder House as the new family moves in.

"What the hell was that?" Tate says, low but indignant.

"Oh, God, Tate, don't be so dramatic. You never used to be this jealous before."

"Yeah, before you wished me away and then started fucking a supermodel!" Tate can tell she wants to laugh at that comment but he's still angry and so then her warm brown eyes flash with annoyance.

"You did your fair share of fucking while we were apart, Tate, and it doesn't matter! That was before. We are together again."

"Are we? Why didn't you want to meet Mr. Broad Shoulders holding hands, then?"

Before Violet could answer, Mr. Broad Shoulders himself stepped out of his room and called a hesitant hello.

Violet turned to him, blushing bright red but recovering fast. Tate stood behind her and glowered, never as good with people as his better half, especially young, handsome muscular boys who were checking out his undead girlfriend.

She stuck her hand out to shake, and the live boy shook it, smiling with brilliantly white teeth, of course. Maybe he was in California to be in a fucking Colgate commercial.

"Hello," Violet said, "I'm Violet Harmon. And this is-"

"Tate. Her boyfriend." Tate spat out, and kept his arms crossed over his chest. Violet gave him a look.

"Hi, Violet Harmon and Tate, her boyfriend." He's still smiling, and Tate wants to punch him even though the new boy is twice Tate's size and more importantly, that act would make Violet even angrier. "You guys live around here?"

"You could say that," Violet hedges, and Tate realizes Mr. Colgate hasn't let go of Violet's hand.

Tate throws an arm around Violet's shoulders and she drops the new boy's hand, biting her lip a bit. "What's your name, kid?"

The larger boy looks slightly taken aback, but recovers quickly. "I'm Timothy Morrow. My baby sister is Rain."

"Baby sister?" Rain comes out into the hallway and Tate sees her blue eyes widen a bit. She smiles, almost exclusively at Tate, and he can feel Violet's shoulders stiffen. "I'm only two minutes younger. He's exaggerating."

"This is Violet Harmon and Tate, her _boyfriend,"_ Timothy exaggerates, sensing his sister's attraction.

Tate's arm slides off Violet's shoulders and he sticks his hand out to Rain. "Tate Langdon." he introduces himself, smiling at her. He can almost feel Violet's jealousy vibrating off him, and it makes him feel justified, lowly proud.

"Nice to meet you. When Kurt Cobain died, did you inherit his style?"

Tate laughed, maybe too loud, but it was nice to have a pretty girl to rib him, even if it was infuriating Violet.

He glanced over at her, and realized she and Timothy were gone. He could hear voices, Violet's laughter, coming from the guest bedroom. Before he could stalk toward them, Rain grabbed his wrist. "Don't worry. He's a bit of a showoff. She'll be fine. You want to see my room?"

Part of him wants to go, not just to make Violet mad but because Rain is snarky and pretty and new, but the sound of Violet's open laugh makes him unable to give in to his lighter, normal teenager impluses.

"Maybe later," he grins at her, not wanting to burn bridges, and her blue eyes flashed prettily.

"Want me to save your girl from my brother's clutches?"

"Please," he said, almost desperately, and Rain shook her head, smiling.

"Ok," she said, sighing, "but I can't watch him every minute, you know."

"You won't have to," Tate said darkly. He wanted to follow Rain into her brother's room but he felt like doing something stupid and that would certainly not help matters with Violet, which were at the moment decidedly shaky.

Later, at the gazebo, after they'd said their hellos to the twins' parents and did the whole pretending to be alive thing, Violet said icily, "Did she show you her room?"

"I don't know, what did Timothy show you?" Tate shot back, the sound of Violet's flirty giggles still stinging.

"Don't be ridiculous, Tate."

"His cock? Is it as big as his broad shoulders suggest?" He's being petty and childish and he knows it but he's breathing hard, still angry at the way she had slid her hand out of his at the sight of the handsome new boy.

"Bigger," Violet countered. "I could barely fit it in my mouth."

Tate growled and grabbed her thin arm, swung her across his lap. She looked up at him, brown eyes flashing. "Were her tits bigger than mine?" She asked, joking but still a bit angry.

Tate allowed a slight smile. "Yeah, but you know, she's older. Still perky, though."

"Yeah he's older too, maybe that's why his cock is so much bigger than yours."

Tate growled again, but his anger was settling. He swung her up to straddle him and kissed her mouth.

"You're a better kisser," she whispered against his mouth.

He pulled away, shocked. "Tell me you did not kiss him."

Violet laughed and laughed, and kissed him again, and for a few hours at the gazebo, they talked and kissed and loved and while new life pulsed in the Murder House, they lived in their own bubble outside of it all.


End file.
